French, Cream Puffs

This is a timeless recipe.

Cream puffs are an excellent example of a French dessert. Pâte à Choux is a versatile dough. The cream puff recipe used was from the St. Honoré cake recipe. St. Honoré cake is a very technical cake with many French baking components in it, and this complexity is very suitable as it was named after the patron saint of baking (“St. Honoré cake”). The fact that it features cream puffs sitting on the very top of the cake speaks the importance of cream puffs to French culinary culture.

There are many interesting facts relating to this cookbook. Claiborne, the author, is a well-known figure in the American food world, and has been accredited with making, not just French cuisine accessible and approachable to the American public. To include the recipe for cream puffs shows that Americans (and the rest of the world) are interested in these pastries and that French baking is not as intimidating as it seems.